


Last Life Running

by orphan_account



Category: Fight Club (1999), Fight Club - All Media Types, Fight Club - Chuck Palahniuk, Super Mario Bros.
Genre: Gen, Video & Computer Games
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-04
Updated: 2016-03-04
Packaged: 2018-05-24 18:06:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 961
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6162007
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tyler plays Mario.  The Narrator watches.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Last Life Running

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this story more than ten years ago, back when I was obsessed with Fight Club and ran a web site about it. After seeing the movie again for the first time since that period of my life, I managed to track this story down and fix it up~

The way Tyler plays Super Mario Brothers, it should be in slow motion with “Chariots of Fire” playing in the background.  He’s that good.

I sit down to watch him.  He’s in World 1-2.  He blasts a Goomba with a fireball.

“This game,” Tyler says, “sends all the wrong messages.”

“Then why are you playing it?”  I lean back in my rusty folding chair and brush at the dirt on my bathrobe.  Everything’s dirty in this house, everything except for Tyler.  He’s got too much soap to stay dirty, and even after the roughest of fights, he always looks clean.  Fresh as a Fire Flower before Mario stomps on it and puts on his white overalls.

“Because it’s fun.”  That sounds pretty funny coming from Tyler.  He’s not the kind of person who does things for fun.

I quit thinking and watch Mario.

Tyler doesn’t use the Warp Zone at the end of the level.  He always plays this way, straight through the game, no shortcuts.  He does this funny thing at the beginning too.  He runs straight into that first Goomba.  Four times.  Smack, smack, smack, smack, down to Mario x 1.  Tyler says, it’s just a game until you’re running on your last life.  Then it’s real, because in reality you don’t get five lives and green mushrooms—he avoids the 1-Ups like he avoids Marla when I’m around.  Tyler says, drugs are for weak people who can’t cope with life by themselves.  Tyler says, real men don’t cushion their minds with dope.  Tyler says, real men go to the zoo and watch the elephants.

“The messages this game sends,” Tyler is telling me, “are that there are only two goals in life: get coins and rescue the princess.”  Another Koopa Troopa eats Mario’s fireball.  “But have you ever noticed it doesn’t matter how many coins you get?  So what if you end the game with a high score.  It doesn’t mean shit in the grand scheme of things.”

“I never really thought about it.”

“And the princess,” Tyler says.  “Manipulative little bitch.”

I have to laugh.  “Hey, what do you have against Toadstool?”

“It’s obvious that she’s got some deal worked out with the big turtle.  Never in the right castle, and even if you find her, you just have to go save her again in round two.  On and on, _ad infinitum_.  And then she gets kidnapped again in the sequels.  It’s a set up.  Mario works his ass off, the poor cuck, while that bimbo’s secretly banging the turtle.”

I guess that would make me Mario and Marla Peach and Tyler Bowser.

“His name’s Bowser.”

“You know too much.”  Tyler reaches one of the fire levels, one of those where you have to go the right way or you end up going in circles until the timer runs out.  Tyler goes the right way the first time, every time.  Just like how he never touches an enemy, or stops moving, or lets Mario lose that last life.  At the end of the level, he blasts the pseudo-Bowser with fireballs.

“Watch this,” Tyler says.  “He turns into one of those smiley face cloud things.”

“Lakitu.  Well, Lakitu’s the guy _on_ the cloud, but—”

“Did I ask you?  This is the one thing you can learn from Mario,” Tyler tells me.  “The so-called big problems in life, the issues everyone shits themselves over, are really just the little pissant things in disguise.  The smiley face clouds just pretending to be the big turtle.”

When Tyler bought the Nintendo, he wouldn’t buy the current system, or even an SNES.  He refused everything except the original.  Tyler says, the later systems were just an attempt to capitalize on the original’s success.  Tyler says, it’s no longer about the games; it’s about the money.  Tyler says, he’s all about the _games_.

“Bowser has kids, you know,” I inform him.

“Yeah?”  He’s only half-listening, speeding through the next level.

“Yeah.  In some games, there’s seven of ‘em, all named for musicians.  In other games, there’s just one, Bowser Jr.  But there’s never a Mrs. Bowser.”

“Good for him,” Tyler says.  “Asexual reproduction.  Make little copies of yourself and leave the woman out of it.”

“One of the kids is a girl.”

“Not a problem.”  Mario runs past a Hammer Brother unscathed.  “One girl in a house full of brothers, she’ll grow up tough.  Tough women are okay, long as they do their own thing.”

I imagine Marla in a polka-dot hair bow, shooting candy rings out of a wand.

Tyler’s on level 8-4.  He runs through, getting the “ding” of approval through the maze bit and jumping in all the right places.  Then he’s at the end, facing Bowser, the real one this time.

“Here we go, moment of truth,” Tyler announces.  “Last life running.”

Mario steps in front of Bowser and stops.  Tyler sets down the controller.  One fireball from Bowser, and Fire Mario shrinks to normal, tiny Mario.  Another fireball, and he dies, breaking the fourth wall to fling himself at the inside of our flickering television screen.  His pixelated face expresses his horror as he falls down, past the bricks of Bowser’s castle floor, down to hell as far as we know.

“What’d you do that for?”  I’m squawking in protest.  “You made it all the way—”

Tyler shrugs.  “You can’t win, champ.  Because sometimes the problem really _is_ the big turtle—and he’s always gonna get you in the end.”  Tyler stands up, claps me on the shoulder, and wanders off.

I scoot my chair forward to pick up the controller.  I reset the game.  I try to jump on the first Goomba and miss.  He walks all over me.

Mario x 4, going on zero.

\--

The End


End file.
